


Snapshots

by MilkshakeKate



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Angst, Comedy, Domestic Fluff, Drunken Confessions, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Getting to Know Each Other, Missions Gone Wrong, One Shot, Shorts, Traditions, Whump, prompt fills
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2018-12-20 06:00:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 6,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11914683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilkshakeKate/pseuds/MilkshakeKate
Summary: Prompt fill shorts of various ratings!July-Aug 17Hands & Submission, Soft & Melody, Warm.Home, Masquerade, Pale & Broken.Sept-Nov 17“What happens if I do this?"“You make me want things I can’t have.”Jan-Mar 18"I dreamt about you last night.”"I wouldn't change a thing about you.""It was supposed to be a secret!"Oct-Nov 18"Your suitcase is empty."





	1. Hands, Submission.

**Author's Note:**

> I miss you all! much love! xxx

_I want you to do something for me._  
  
Illya recites it like scripture to soothe his doubts, ease the troubling associations plucking at his conscience.  
  
It’s what she wants.  
  
“Like this?” he murmurs.  
  
Gaby’s nod is shallow, dark eyes roving all over him for hesitance, judgement. He knows better than to kiss her; she has already laid down the rules. Illya knows how to follow orders. His last: to make his own.  
  
Her wrists are gathered over her head, bound by just one of his hands. Illya palms down her naked waist with the other, teasing over her flickering skin and watching rapt as Gaby wriggles and arches into him, keening with soft, breathy sounds in the back of her throat. She tests the strength of his hold, so, dutifully, he doubles it.  
  
“Please,” she whispers, and smiles wryly up at him, knowing what it can do. “ _Please_ , Kuryakin.”  
  
Illya loses his breath with a curse into her chest, and obeys.

 


	2. Soft, Melody.

 

Illya, surrounded by the paperwork he will certainly be completing alone tonight, has been banished to the couch to endure this punishment.

It’s far from the idle humming he’s used to. Gaby hums and whistles and sings as often as she dances and, although she isn’t spectacularly adept, it isn’t unpleasant. It isn’t a hardship, listening to her. From sugary sweet pop songs to a rock and roll numbers, Illya is content to only listen. Often she finds a repetitive little melody she can’t get out of her head, and Illya, after spending hours and hours with her each day, finds that he can’t get it out of his. 

Tonight her singing tears through the suite, utterly tuneless by design. She clamours on, warbling alongside the bottles clattering into the tub.

Feeling indulgent after three dry martinis, Gaby had attempted to drag the entire stereo console into bathroom. She hadn’t taken Illya’s interference — or his lecture on rudimentary electrical safety — lightly. 

If he won’t let her listen, she will make her own music.

The Shirelles would not appreciate this rendition.

Her dressing gown is all he has left of her good mood. That too has been disowned, like him, on the couch. Gaby had stormed into the bathroom in such drunken petulance that he hadn’t even  _wanted_ to point it out to her. 

He eyes the garment now. A rich royal blue, a sash belt in satsuma orange. Solo had ‘bought’ it for her in Okinawa. The silk cuffs are melting for washing her hands and brushing her teeth, carelessly letting one too many drips from splashing drinks slip down her wrists and soak them. 

Illya peers over his shoulder at the closed bathroom door, the defiant yowling beyond it. She will be a long time yet, and he is certain she will take longer just to subject him to Elvis Presley. 

Pulling the robe down to the couch cushions, he discreetly rolls the collar between his fingers. Cool, and impossibly soft. It folds and slips in his hands, shimmering and light. Illya closes his eyes. Against the curve of her neck, he imagines, he wouldn’t know where the silk ended and Gaby began.

He doesn’t hear the singing stop. He doesn’t hear the door opening, the pad of her damp feet on the plush carpet. When she covers his hand and he balks, eyes wide and hands frozen, she doesn’t say a word. Neither does he.

Wrapped in a towel and with another twisted around her hair, she carefully slips the silk from his fingers and slides it over both bare shoulders, ties the sash at her waist, and smiles at him uncommonly gently, knowingly. Illya wonders if the silk is still warm where his hands have been, if she can feel it sinking heat into the nape of her neck.

When she turns on her heel, Gaby softly sings a song under her breath. A melody he hasn’t heard since Rome.


	3. Warm

“Just try them on.”

“I already have—”   

“Yes, for work,” Gaby says, pushing them into his chest. “These are for you.”

Illya turns the gloves over, and over again. The palms are black leather, the top a thick grey wool. Four risen seams stretch subtly from knuckle to cuff. A classic cut, inoffensive. Practical. He imagines how they would pair with his black winter coat, and the ushanka she insists he wears with even the slightest wind chill. He hasn’t yet decided whether she really likes that hat or if she’s only making fun of him.

“Go on,” she urges, peering up at him. “Or don’t you like them?”

He can’t fathom what he has done to deserve a gift, always feels uncomfortable accepting them, but clearly it matters to her that he at least puts them on. 

Illya slips the first over his left hand, wriggles his fingers. The cuff sits comfortably on top of his watch, the wool protecting the glass face. It’s as if he has worn them in for months, as snug and as tailored a fit as he could pick for himself. 

“I didn’t know your size,” she hurries, as if having heard him. “I just asked for the biggest they had. They thought I was joking.”

Illya’s lips quirk with the slightest smile. “Your kidskin gloves, Milan,” he remembers, and wonders if she does too. “I asked for the smallest.”

Gaby either pretends not to hear or isn’t really listening at all. She has already taken the second glove from him and is tugging it onto his right hand. Illya straightens his fingers, lets her pat around the cuff and pinch at his palm until it sits properly.

“You would never have bought them for yourself,” she goes on, avoiding his eye. “And your hands are always so cold. You said you were going to Moscow again soon. So. I think you should take them with you. Keep you warm.”

When she finally finishes prodding at him, Illya grasps her hand before she can drop it. The glove moulds effortlessly, the leather of the palms soft enough to feel the shape of her fingers. He imagines the warmth. “Thank you. It is — thoughtful.”

“Yes, well,” Gaby begins, with a dismissive huff of a laugh, but she tapers off as soon as her eyes meet his. Something she sees makes up her mind; she slows, and she gentles. Carefully, Gaby turns his gloved hand in hers. She pushes her fingertips down his wrist and under the cuff, runs them softly over the calloused heel of his palm.

Illya peers quizzically down at her, something too strong surging in his chest.


	4. Home

Moscow is home. Moscow with its metro’s frescoes, echoing floors, glittering chandeliers. The cobblestone of Red Square, the green lake of Gorky Park, and the trams, the trains, the satisfying cohesion of a city built on efficiency and endless alteration; ancient and modern, humble and grand, sprawling and intricate. Moscow, Russia, is home.

In London, Illya considers lifting Gaby from the car. It counts as a door. The gate to the small front garden, too, is a threshold. Would it begin at the door to the building, or at the door to the apartment? There is a nuance to the superstition that, in all the coordinated chaos of the past two months, he has not had the proper time to dissect. 

He has missed the car door. The garden gate, before he could gather his courage, is already creaking closed behind him. Gaby’s heels click quickly over the paving slabs, her knee-length skirt swaying. How like Gaby to push ahead and hurry upstairs; she knows what comes next as well as he does, and isn’t going to wait for it.

The keys to the building jingle in her hand like the peal of bells, and before Illya can open his mouth to protest the door is already pushed open and she is so nearly, nearly inside.

“Wait.”

Gaby looks back at him. She is haloed, and glowing, and his. There is a speck of confetti in her hair. He has seen her at this open door one hundred times before but it strikes him, still, even with a key of his own and his name bound to hers, to know that he is invited inside.

“Well? What is it?” 

Illya huffs a deep breath through his nose. He opens his hands and beckons her back, swallowing down his embarrassment. With a quirked brow Gaby gauges him. She softens the longer she looks. Decided, her white shoe comes cautiously back to the tiles of the open porch. 

He will be mocked for it. But it is better to be safe than sorry.

“Illya!” Gaby yelps when he ducks to lift her, his arm looping under her knees and the other around her waist. White satin crackles over tulle and, blowing her hair back again with a puff of a breath, Gaby resigns to settling into his hold like he is only a comfortable chair.

“Precaution.” It’s a tone he reserves for debriefing, as if he can’t be laughed at. She does laugh, and she does lay her arm over his shoulders, the crook of her elbow warm and familiar against the nape of his neck. She has made fun of him for his superstitions before, being ever so practical and sceptical in all four corners of his life.  _So Eastern_ , she’d teased, but she had listened, her cheek to his chest while he’d told her the stories the Party had forbidden.   
  
Gaby hums very seriously now, stroking his cheek and tucking him under the chin. “Evil spirits follow brides into the home, not the hall.”  
  
Illya concentrates on passing through the frame, ensuring it doesn’t catch her anywhere. Inside, he is only partially satisfied. There are four flights of stairs to their apartment, and their own door there besides.  
  
Illya huffs, adjusts Gaby in his arms with a jolt, and takes the first step.  
  
This will be home, as well.


	5. Masquerade

Illya’s dress shoes on the terracotta tiles are a comforting thing, heavy and steady, and her hands are in his as she backs further down the terrace. He may fight her all he wants, but he still steers her around the upturned chairs and abandoned glasses, still frowns for the late night chill raising goosebumps on her bare arms. 

Gaby’s back soon meets a wall of ivy, where the leaves are icy wet on her shoulders but the light of the party doesn’t quite spill over. The dark seam of the manor’s east wing and its grand center is quiet, and alone, and, with the rest of the masquerade ball unravelling inside, Gaby can finally get a hold on something she has been coveting all night. Illya is pulled closer, and his hands land in the tangle of green vines on either side of her head.

“I have work to—” A finger to his lips stops him.

“Solo can handle it.”

He huffs a sigh through his nose. It ghosts warmly over her fingers, chasing out the chill, and it thrills her just to have his breath on her again. Gaby traces over his lips, because they are all she has had of him all night. The mask has stolen him from her, his nose, his brow, his cheeks, and she has missed them all. Even the scar on his temple is discreetly tucked beneath the simple black mask. But his eyes…

A window slams open and they jump, Gaby’s vision blackened by Illya’s suit, his body arched over her and a glare thrown over his shoulder. But only a drunken hand disappears, and the sheers are dropped over the open window. They billow out. A breath of night air; the party had been hot, sweltering. 

Gaby breathes easily, until Illya’s eyes are back on hers and his hand leaves the wall to slide around her waist. 

“I can’t be seen with you.”

_Isn’t that always the case?_  Gaby takes to the ribbon at the back of his head, unpicks it with one hand. She pulls it down, hides the mask behind her back. “There,” she says, so taken by his mussed hair, the soft blink as he gets used to the night air on his face. “Now nobody knows who you are.”

Illya smiles, but Gaby wonders if it upsets him too - the masks they wear, the dark they seek out - or if he will let it be this way forever, because it would risk too much to change it. 

His fingers trace the curve of her mask now, the ginger feathers and ivory ribbon. He shifts it gently to the crown of her head and leans to kiss her bared temple, the curve of her jaw, and finally her mouth, open, because Gaby holds him there and she won’t let go, her fingers in the back of his blond hair and  _pushing_  until he gives her more. 

His lips brush hers even when he parts from her, eyes opening dazedly. “But I am taller than the other guests,” he points out, as if she could forget. As if she couldn’t spot him a mile away, wherever they are.

Gaby sweeps down to his shoulder, breathes a heady little laugh. “Perhaps if you were kneeling…”


	6. Pale, Broken

“дверь,” Illya croaks, and Gaby tilts his head in the hay to get a better look at him. He’s pale, his face sheened with sweat. When she takes to his cheek he clenches his teeth to stop them from chattering, but she can feel him trembling under her fingers. 

The mission has swallowed everything. He hadn’t slept, he lost his focus. And now it’s over. 

Illya shudders on the trodden dirt floor, too weak to hold it in. He’s still staring up at her, every tendon and every muscle held taut, urging her to meet his eye. Gaby ignores the warm wet patches seeping into the knees of her trousers, the dark stain spreading out from under him. She pulls a piece of straw from his hair. She hadn’t noticed it there before. It is just the same colour. “What are you talking about now?”

“B-barn door is open. Y—you will g-get cold.”

The lump in her throat won’t let her laugh fall out. Gaby shrugs out of her coat and lays it flat on top of him, tries to tuck him in. It feels fruitless, like she is just a child burying him in the sand at the beach. “Don’t worry about that.”

“Ah. I worry t-too mu—” his whole body jolts, racked through with his wet, crackling coughs. Gaby can only watch, struggling to find a place to touch him without making it worse. When he’s finished he gives her an accepting, broken little smile, fresh red smudges blooming in the corners. 

How had she ever teased him for worrying? Gaby folds down, wrung out, and lays her cheek on his shoulder. His breath rattles in his sinking chest as she soaks into his shirt, rubs her nose on his sleeve. She wonders if anybody will ever worry about her again, after this. “I know you do,” she says, staring into the hay. “I don’t mind.”


	7. What happens if I do this?

When Illya wakes, the sun is streaming through Gaby’s curtains and spreading warmth over his skin. The air had been too close last night, their bodies too hot for sheets or nightwear. A lost cause. Stretching his legs now, wistful, Illya is made suddenly aware that his mind isn’t the only part of him to wake so early. He groans, feels blindly over the mattress for her body. 

He should have known. 

Illya finds her standing on a chair at six o’clock in the morning, changing a light bulb in her kitchen. 

She’s wearing his dirty undershirt, tossed on carelessly though she has a wardrobe full of couture. Silent, Illya follows her lithe silhouette through the cotton, and thinks greedily of tracing it with his hands. The length of her legs and the depth of her tan, too, so wonderfully dark against all that white… Even on a chair she must come up almost  _en pointe_  to twist in the new bulb, and with the stretch of her arms he’s gifted a promising glimpse of her bare bottom, peeking out from under the hem.

“Good morning,” he says drowsily, and he means it, as he crosses the sun-warmed tiles. 

“You shouldn’t sneak around like that.” Gaby flicks a clever little glance over her shoulder. “I could electrocute myself.”

“You isolated the power.” He grasps her hips to hold her steady on the chair, noses firmly down the length of her back. She smells of him in this shirt, and of her underneath it. Hungrily he pushes the cotton up to her waist to kiss the two dimples at the base of her spine, and Gaby stumbles, lets out a breathy laugh as she tries to pull it back down. 

“What are you doing?”

Illya’s hands slip low over her toned stomach, tracing the sensitive dips between her hip bones and her thighs. Goosebumps rise there and Illya smiles into her skin, closing his eyes as his breath ghosts down her back. Gaby covers his hands then, holding on.

“Well,” she mutters, “I could still fall off this chair.”

Illya hums with interest, grave. “And what happens if I do this?” His touch slips lower, searching for her, brushing between her thighs and through her slick with his fingertips. A soft sound rises from the back of Gaby’s throat, so he spreads her gently, curiously, sucks a kiss to the curve of her bottom.

Gaby’s shocked laugh is low, fond. She grips his hair to pull him in closer, strokes the nape of his neck. “Keep that up,” she says, “and maybe you’ll find out.”


	8. You make me want things I can't have.

 

The diamonds glitter up at her from their royal blue beds, beaming. 

“Which do you like?”

His hand is gentle on the small of her back. Behind them, the little Swiss street is flooded with Christmas shoppers; arms full of gift bags, hat boxes, gaily wrapped toys. The crowd is thick with furs and wool and hurrying boots, but even in the rush it all seems to stream around she and Illya, as if they are in their own little bubble. 

Gaby peers up at him. “Why?”

“Let’s say I am — curious.”

It’s how he behaves when he is working a mark. The ease with which he slips into this confidence, this flirtation. She has only ever seen him so at ease in bed, afterwards, when he is tired and panting, tracing her skin, having momentarily forgotten what they are. Nothing in the world could deter him then.

Gaby squints at his blond hair and his black coat, and how his nose and ears have pinkened slightly in the cold. He must be a vision in Russia. She is still expecting him to smirk, to turn her away from this window and everything inside. Thinks that, perhaps, she will always be expecting it.

She has been staring at him for too long, so Illya turns his attention back to the flocked blue velvet behind the glass, points at something on the back row. “This one?” 

It’s a sunset coloured thing, encircled by diamonds.

Gaby wonders if they are being watched. That this might be some emergency cover of his, crowding her into this private world only to use the glass for its reflection, to hide their faces, to establish a reason for walking down the same street as their mark, a jeweller and a peddler of Nazi gold, three times in succession. If it is, it’s a cruel game.

Illya abruptly picks up her hand and removes her glove, looks over her fingers. The icy wind chills them, so he holds them tighter. It’s something he has done a thousand times, admiring her like this, but this touch has intent. It frightens her. Or, at least, it pulls her heart up into her throat as if it does.

Illya hums thoughtfully. “Though, for your colouring—”

“You know,” Gaby interrupts, and it comes out shakily, light in her chest, as if she could possibly still be nervous with him. “You really are a terrible communist.”

This is usually enough to cut short any game he has, but he is still warm. “How so?”

Gaby slips her hand from his, tugs her glove back on. “You make me want things I can’t have.” 


	9. I dreamt about you last night

Illya set down the glass of water and felt blindly around her calf.

Another successful mission couldn’t warrant this level of inebriation every week. She was too small to keep up with the Cowboy, no matter how expensive their bets. He had told her this many times. And yet, every time, because he must, he would end up here, helping her out of couture and tucking her into a hotel bed before heading, exhausted, back to his own.

Perched on the edge of the mattress, Illya found the little zip of her white leather boot. With some awkward fumbling he finally got a grip on it and pulled. The leather peeled off, and Gaby wriggled her freed foot in the air with an  _ahhh_. She gave him her other leg willingly, swinging it over the mattress and nearly clocking him with the blocky heel.  
  
She kicked as he struggled, prodded at his shoulder and pushed into his stomach, dodged his swatting hand. After the fifth time, Illya lost his grip and dropped her leg off the edge of the bed, where it bounced back and struck him square in the knee cap.

Illya huffed, picked it back up. “Stay  _still_.”

Gaby laughed and she jolted with a hiccup, which made her laugh even more. “You shou—!” another hiccup, her eyes going wide with the force of it, “—should be quicker, Kuryakin.”

“You,” he said, “should not stay up in hotel bar, gambling and drinking with thieves.”

Gaby ignored this, instead peering around her hotel room as if seeing it for the first time. On looking down at her own legs, something occurred to her. Illya couldn’t guess what — she kept it to herself, smiling privately before obediently holding out her foot to him again, en pointe, so he could finish.

Once removed, Illya inspected the Courrèges boot and told her off for scuffing them.   
  
Gaby ignored this too, instead sprawling out luxuriously on the hotel sheets. Her fingers grazed the headboard and her body slid down the pillows, her hair splaying around her head in a dark halo. And there she watched him, waited for him to turn around and see her.

When he did, faint lines gathered on his brow but he said nothing. Her dress was riding up with all her shifting, so, dutifully, Illya pulled it back down for her.

A secure rush of fondness travelled up through Gaby’s chest and into her cheeks.

“I dreamt about you last night,” she told him then, sudden and impulsive, light headed, and she covered his whole hand to keep it on her thigh. He didn’t pull away. So she pressed firmer, slid him the slightest bit higher. She kept her voice low, soft, as she tried to be gentle with him. She knew him, how he was. “Dreamt about you like this.”

Illya stared at his hand on her thigh, and at her own smaller one covering it. The hem of her dress grazed his fingertips. She drew her knee higher, encouraging him to come closer, and with it he felt the muscles of her leg tense and relax, live and whole and warm under his touch. 

 _Like this?_   he thought, struck by disbelief, and met her eyes as steadily as he could manage. 

Gaby blinked softly at him, her gaze sleepy but her chin tilted, daring him to tell her that he’d never dreamt of it himself.

And she hiccupped.

Illya sighed. Pained to remember where he was, he regretfully slipped out of her grasp. “Drink the water,” he murmured, rising from the bed, “and go to sleep.”

“Sleep?” Gaby complained.

With Illya's eventual nod, she rolled clumsily, reluctantly over.

Her empty hand had already forgotten his, which was thrumming as he'd balled it into a fist by his side. Gaby's lazy movement swept the dress over her hips, accentuating every curve which,  _yes_ , he’d dreamt of before, and certainly would again that night, in his own room all the way down the hall. 

“Mm,” she hummed, pleased with his suggestion, with the dreams that would be waiting for her there. “With pleasure.”


	10. I wouldn’t change a thing about you

Illya slots the listening device back into its foam-lined case. The party is over, the receiver is silent. A romantic evening, a decadent party; Gaby had spent an evening with her asset and his car, his extortionate attire, his glittering, influential company. A night rubbing shoulders with the stars, and being wined and dined on his pocket, whispering intimately in dimly lit corners about the business she has met with him to discuss - he had promised her:later, _later,_  and kept her on his arm to take in the room yet again.

It’s over now. Illya rubs his tired eyes and rolls his shoulders against the strain. His jaw aches too, and his wrist is sore for writing so rapidly.

But now Gaby knows what's out there. She knows what she is missing, and will see far too clearly just how little she is coming back to. Like the last bubble popping in her champagne, the rest of her world lies flat.

It isn’t until the lock slips on the suite’s door that Illya realises he’s been gritting his teeth since the moment she’d left for the car.

“Hallo,” Gaby sighs, and drops her expensive handbag on the floor. She waves him to sit back down as she takes off her coat, “Don’t get up. I don’t plan on it for the rest of the week.”

“It went well,” Illya says evenly. “You did not enjoy it?”

“My ears are ringing,” she answers. Her cheeks are flushed with cold air and champagne. He’d listened to her sipping at one after another, wondered when the asset would ask her to slow down. He hadn’t. “It’s nice and quiet in here. I want this dress off. And these stupid shoes. That’s the last time I let Solo choose them.”

Illya is pleased to hear it. He makes room for her to sit down beside him. “I thought you would enjoy party like this. Music, dancing. Oysters.”

Gaby plods over to the couch to peer at his notes on the coffee table, at his uniform Cyrillic. Giving up on trying to make sense of them, she drops down on the cushions and sinks like a deflating balloon.

“You enjoyed dinner with rich, handsome man. In public.“ Illya leans down to gentle Gaby’s legs onto his lap, makes a start on the complicated fastening of her heels. She settles back and buries her shoulders into the cushions, watching him down the length of the couch with sleepy eyes.

“With everybody in the restaurant watching us, and you in my ear,” she adds.

Illya allows that with a small hum. “But you could be seen together. He spoiled you. He treated you like his woman.”

“And he talked on and on all night, all about himself. He showed me off like a new watch and tried to tell me how his car worked. Can you believe that? He tried to tell _me!_ And he put his hand on my bottom. Twice.”

Illya decides to ignore that. He sets the heels down beneath the coffee table but he keeps Gaby’s aching calves in his lap, holds her there by her ankles. “You do not want that?” he manages at last, sweeping his cautious gaze all the way up to her furrowed brow. She’s quiet for so long he feels he has to clarify, has to be sure. “You do not want that from me.”

Gaby looks him over. She softens with his question, his ridiculous question. She finally breathes a laugh.

“No.” Lazily shaking her head, Gaby crosses one ankle over the other to trap his careful hands there. “No, Illya. I wouldn’t change a thing about you.”


	11. It was supposed to be a secret!

“You were followed?” he whispers, feeling for her hands in the dark. 

“No.” Gaby leans past him to peek through a crack in the door. “Were you?”  

The corridor stretches the length of the servants’ wing. They’ve landed themselves in the manor's maintenance cupboard, lined with bowing shelves and lit by a low, dim bulb that Illya will surely knock his head on if he isn’t careful. Gaby flicks the light off to spare him the inevitable, and shifts in closer. 

“You should stay close next time,” he murmurs. 

“Don’t tell me what to do.” 

He scoffs. “Last night—”  

Gaby shushes him briskly. “Listen! Is that…?”  

Footsteps. Dress shoes pacing over creaking floorboards and growing louder, closer. Illya pushes Gaby behind him but she scrabbles her head under his arm to get a fair eyeful. Illya silently slips a hammer from its hook, tightens his grip. 

The door opens —  

And there’s Napoleon Solo, adjusting his dinner jacket and inviting himself in. “Good evening.” 

“Find somewhere else!” Illya hisses. 

Solo leaves the door slightly ajar behind him. “I don’t think so.” 

“Get out, Solo.” 

“Gaby? There you are.” Napoleon pauses then, assessing the situation. “Am I interrupting something?” 

“Shut up.” Gaby slips around Illya’s side to wedge herself between the two of them. After some huffing, Illya returns the hammer to its hook and folds his arms belligerently instead. “Are you alone?” she whispers. 

“Unfortunately.” 

“We cannot stay in here all night,” Illya mutters. “ _You_ need to cause distraction. Then we escape.” 

“I just did. They’re looking for us.” 

“You said you weren’t followed!” hisses Gaby, and thumps him in the arm.  

“I didn’t say they weren’t trying.” Napoleon brushes off his jacket, catches Gaby’s second punch in his palm. “The party’s split up. If anybody comes down here, alone, we'll have Illya give them The Kiss.” 

Gaby pauses. She glances over her shoulder at a pursed-lipped Illya, and decides for herself to continue. “The what?”  

Illya swears under his breath. He manoeuvers his partners so he can peer out of the crack in the door instead. 

“Oh, you don’t know? A remarkable gimmick, really. With the element of surprise and  _very_ specific pressure, the opponent is completely immobilised for, say, twenty minutes or so.” 

“Hmm. So, what is it? Some sort of… acupressure?”  

“Something like that,” Solo allows, pleased to be consulted. “Top secret military training, of course. You wouldn’t understand.”   

“Oh, I wouldn’t understand?” 

“Gaby,” Illya warns. 

Solo adjusts his lapel, smiles down at her in the dark. “That’s right.” 

Gaby claps him right on the ear. 

He goes stock still. Gaby gasps and Illya immediately snatches up her wrist. They watch in silence as Napoleon’s eyes drift closed and his chin drops to his chest. He sways gently, then finds his centre and freezes bolt upright, like a well-dressed puppet held up by its strings. 

Gaby slaps her free palm to her mouth but quickly tears it away, as if it could just as easily do the same to her.  

Illya hums, accepting their new predicament. “Why would you do this?” 

“I didn’t mean to!” Gaby protests. “You said it took years to master! Why would  _you_ show me how to do it?” 

“It was supposed to be a secret.”  

Gaby stares at her work. She reaches out to prod Solo’s cheek so Illya catches her other wrist too. He lowers his voice, feeling the urgency in Gaby’s hands to get a hold of the problem.  

“Remember. No touching.” 

“Oh.” Gaby’s grip relaxes in his. “Well, now what?” 

Illya considers it. The cupboard is quiet now. They are at low risk of being caught, and can discuss tactics without Solo’s intervention. Despite the blatant breach of protocol, and the complications a bad attempt could have wrought, Illya is…  _proud_ of her. Not that he should be. He is certainly not proud of himself. Two vodkas and an evening in Gaby’s hotel room is not cause enough to share KGB technique. 

“We wait,” he decides. Gaby’s disappointed eye roll endears him, and he softens. “I should have known you would master this quickly, as well.” 

Gaby tilts her head back. “Mastered?”  

Illya holds her gaze, and she smiles.  

“You know,” Gaby murmurs, and steps a little bit closer. “We do have twenty minutes…” 

“No.” 


	12. Your suitcase is empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIDICULOUS... enjoy! xxx

“You lost it?!”

“It was stolen,” Illya mutters. He scowls at the platform edge, considering whether he should jump off it and onto the rain splashed tracks below. It would save him the embarrassment. He can barely look Gaby in the eye. “They took only your ticket. Restroom was very busy, it could have been anyone. I was… concentrating.” 

Solo’s amusement is humiliating enough without Gaby’s dropped jaw to top it. She had forbidden him from using the restroom in the first place, so close to their departure time, but his hatred for cramped train car toilets had overruled. 

“Well, are they still here?” Gaby asks, searching the platform. “You couldn’t catch them?”

“I did not see them.”

The train has arrived. Weary passengers pour out of the carriages, weaving between the gaggles of those waiting to board. Umbrellas clatter open and people huddle closely as the platform begins to fill.

They don’t have long.

“Now what?” Gaby presses. 

Illya scans the bustling platform and hums grimly. At last daring to meet Gaby’s eye, he lowers his voice and leans down to her. “You take my ticket. I will enter train another way. There is door from luggage car to the engine room. When the train departs, I board this way and go to the dining car. I will meet you there after tickets have been checked.”

Napoleon draws air through his teeth. “While I’m sure you’ll befriend a number of streetwise urchins on your travels, I don’t think that will work.”

“Why not? It has been done before.”

“Because that leaves Gaby here with the ticket of Mr. Evgeny Konstantin.”

The first whistle blows, and the conductors wave the streams of new passengers to board. 

Illya grits his teeth. “Then she will take your ticket.”

“She doesn’t look like a Mr. Harvey J. Williams either.”

“You forge documents. You change the name!”

“Peril, I’m flattered, but even I need more than thirty seconds to do that.”

“Then what is  _your_ plan, Cowboy?”

“ _My_ plan was to keep three tickets in the first place.”

“Illya, empty your suitcase into Solo’s.”

They finally notice Gaby at their elbows. She’s taking off her hat and her jacket. 

“What?”  

The whistle blows again. 

“Go behind the toilets and empty your suitcase, Illya.”

“Why his suitcase?”

“It’s bigger.” 

Solo purses his lips.

“You—” starts Illya. He stares at her incredulously. He wouldn’t put it past her, this ridiculous plot, but he hopes he is wrong. Hopes that she is only joking.  “The intelligence. The documents—” 

“I have the documents.”

Illya’s ears burn. “Where have you put them?”

“Somewhere you won’t lose them. Now, open your suitcase.” Gaby grapples for the handle by Illya’s knee but he immediately tugs it out of her reach. She lunges again but he dodges her, and he won’t give in. 

“Fine,” Gaby says, with an adult calm that embarrasses him. “Follow me.” She glares up at them both, then rounds the corner of the redbrick ticket office and out of sight. 

Napoleon is close behind. “I’m sure you don’t need to be told twice.”

With a despairing glance at the quickly filling train they’re due to catch, Illya follows.

 

 

 

Gaby snaps both suitcases open. Cushions of neatly folded shirts, trousers, and paired socks are torn from their beds with reckless abandon. Beneath them, his expensive surveillance equipment. Gaby couldn’t care less. She stuffs it all into Solo’s already snugly packed case, bouncing her weight down into her palms to squash it. She shoves several tiny boxes down the corners, and stabs Illya’s large brogues down with them.

Napoleon bats at her arm. “Be careful with those, they’re sterling.”

“Who wears four pairs of cufflinks in three days?” 

Illya ignores them, fuming alone. She’d told the truth; the documents have been stolen from the lining of his case, judging by the carefully ripped seams. He’d taught her this, and she has used it against him. Illya can barely hold in his protest before she insults him again. 

“I’m glad you’re both so vain,” she notes. “There’s lots of room in here.”

Solo, apparently, has only just cottoned on. “Oh, Gaby. You can’t be serious.” 

She pulls off her heels and stands on the wet concrete in her stocking feet.

Illya sighs hard through his nose. He closes his eyes and shakes his head, but he knows there will be no dissuading her. “This is very bad idea. You will get caught.”

“Caught? Only if you can’t carry me. But you can, can’t you?”

Once. Illya’s lips pinch. He shakes his head at Solo’s enquiring little smirk. 

The final whistle blows.

And now he has lost even Napoleon to this ridiculous plan. “She’s a ballerina, Peril. She’ll last half an hour. Try to calm down.”

“This is not happening. Get her out of my suitcase”

But Gaby is already kneeling down in his suitcase. Her dress is wrinkling and Illya is horrified to find that she fits very neatly, lying on her side with her knees bent. She glares up at him from the ground and, if it weren’t for the furious authority burning up at him, he could perhaps smile as if it was a game.

“Illya,” Gaby says firmly. “Close this suitcase.”

“No. This is ridiculous idea. We get new ticket. We take the next train. We have until eight o’clock toni—”

“Solo, close it.”

“As the lady wishes.”

Illya grabs his wrist. “You close this case and I close your eyes for very, very long time.”

“ _All aboard! All aboard!_ ” 

“Enough!” Gaby slaps at their clasped wrists above her. “Close this case, or I’ll tell Waverly that you lost my ticket.”

“I will tell him myself. I compromised mission. It is my fault.”

“Then I’ll tell Solo about the time you carried me.”

Gaby smiles at Napoleon. Napoleon smiles at Illya. Illya closes his eyes, smiles at no one, and breathes a curse against them both before tucking Gaby’s soft, spilling hair inside and clasping the case shut.

Picking up both Gaby’s and his own, significantly heavier case, Napoleon accompanies his partner to the train and tips his head generously. “Ladies first.”

Illya glowers. He heaves the suitcase into both arms, braced hard against his chest, and ignores every puzzled stare as he carries it carefully, miserably aboard.


End file.
